A Short History of the Raku Tea Bowl

Chinese and Korean wares remained highly prized, and vessels made for other purposes were often reimagined for tea. Chojiro's bowls marked another direction: a Japanese form shaped around the making, receiving and drinking of one bowl of matcha.

How the Raku tea bowl emerged

1. Late 16th century

   Tea and new Japanese utensils

   Alongside the continued esteem for imported wares, late-sixteenth-century tea culture in Kyoto encouraged the creation of new objects made in Japan. Sen no Rikyu did more than arrange established treasures: he also sought forms suited to the tea he wanted to practise.

2. Azuchi-Momoyama period

   Chojiro and Rikyu's ideas

   Raku tea bowls are understood to have begun with the potter Chojiro working from Rikyu's ideas. Rather than being thrown on a wheel, the clay was formed by hand and carved with a tool. Early black and red bowls were spare in appearance, placing emphasis on touch, scale and the presence of the bowl itself.

3. From the late 16th century

   From imayaki to Raku

   The earliest bowls were known by names including imayaki, or “contemporary ware”; the terms Jurakuyaki and Raku later became established. A tradition links the name to a seal bearing the character 樂, presented by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The identity of the recipient and other details are described differently across historical accounts.

Hanasennin—an independent practice, not a lineage claim

The word Raku can refer to the historic works and lineage of the Raku family, while “Raku ware” is also used more broadly for hand-formed, glazed and low-fired ceramic practice. An artist's lineage and an individual method of making should not be treated as the same thing.

Hanasennin—Kato Nagakazu—did not belong to the Raku family or its workshop. In Fujisawa during the Showa 30s (1955–1964), he sought his own clay, built his own kiln and developed a way to form a bowl entirely on the palms, using neither a wheel nor a table. He called this independent method shin-tebineri, the new hand-pinched Raku tea bowl.